Author Archives: SewTara

Quilting as you go spill over.

I’m completely and utterly enjoying my Craftsy Patchwork Quilt as You Go class, it’s ridiculously fun and informative.

I’m still working on my bag but I was looking through the mountain of scraps that was laid out in my workspace and I glimpsed this girl and was insipired to use the techniques to whip up a scrappy cup cozy.

I even got brave and tried some free motion quilting outlining on the girl and unicorn. I wasn’t very precise wiht it, just wanted to sort of go around the outline and big features. It’s such a cool effect. It didn’t take long to quilt some straight lines and free motion parts but boy does it make a big difference on the cozy. Sort of turns it into a little one of a kind work of art!


I think I may have found a new favourite quick and scrap busting project!

Wheee fabric surprise!

I got some beautiful Marimekko fabric cuttings from my elementary school friend Annhy! Thanks to the wonders of Facebook and now other such social media we can be in touch with all sorts of people we wouldn’t konw a thing about otherwise! So while we went to school from grades 3-7 together in Toronto she now lives in sunny Miami. Strangely she’s got 2 adorable little boys just like me.

A while back she wrote asking if I’d like some odds and ends of Marimekko fabric she had lying around. Free fabric? I’m in! I pulled them right out of the package and photographed them. I suppose in hindsight I could have ironed it all. Oh well.

This particular piece is HUGE. Not sure what I’ll do with any of it yet but I’m sure something will pop into my head.

Jam session.

I made jam!!!

Delicious, delicious raspberry jam.

It sure costs a small fortune to buy the raspberries for it! It was $50 for the flat, which should have been $60 but they were having a buy 5 get one free thing. BUT all those raspberries made about 25 jars of jam, so when you do the math $2 per jar of delicious home made jam isn’t too bad. It’s just like shopping at Costco, it costs a lot up front!

We also made some raspberry vinegar, it should be ready for salads in about a week. Yum!

That’s just a shameless, “gee my kid is cute” shot. He’s got all these little freckles splattered across his nose and cheeks and this funny little line on his nose that tans differently than the rest . . . super cute!

I made 2 big batches yesterday with the supervision/instruction of Grandma and the help of the kids. Today I’m going to finish off the pints that are left and whip up a batch on my own. Fingers crossed I can do it!

Creative Bug class.

I was hanging around last night with some people, mostly just to be in the company of others. They were geeking out with various games, roleplaying things and such and I was just happy to be out and about. I actually got to a lot of things I’ve been meaning to do. Things I wouldn’t have sat down and done at home, I would have let myself get distracted by chores and such.

I watched some Craftsy classes, I read some of my online magazines and I watched a Creative Bug class. I watched this fun bracelet making class while I was out and then got home at around midnight, put the kettle on and started to find the fabric I wanted to use so I could take the project with me to embroider. But then I got inspired and decided to quilt together scraps and make my bracelet out of those.

When I tried to insert a fun snap I discovered my bracelet was too thick. I chose a thick interfacing so note to self not to do that next time, but also I think the quilting, depending on where you had seams, would effect the snap being able to work too. I had to resort to velcro, but it still works. I was going to add a fun wooden button to it too but I think that would make it too bulky. Can’t wait to give another one a try.

Now of course my favourite section is the sewing classes, but there are lots of fun other classes to watch too.

And yes, I write notes on my hand. Had to remember the mall and berries today. It was super important.

Vintage word treasures.

All these cool letter and word items were in the stash I snagged from school.

Just the packaging of these boxes is great.  And the names in the sentence cards.

This Dolch set is really neat. Call me silly but I didn’t even realize that Dolch was an actual person, yes, says the teacher. The year on this little pamphlet that’s with the cards says ‘1941’. Crazy.

I’m giving the things I’m not going to put to use in crafts or projects to my Red Boot Barn friend so check out her store for some of these goodies, and a bunch of other neat stuff.

Vintage picture treasures.

The end of school brings all us teacher types at my school scrambling on the last PA day to get our rooms all cleared of things from tables and shelves in prep for the big cleaning all our rooms get during the summer. My friend Ashley was leaving our school and was purging some of his stuff. He had these great treasures he saved from someone years before doing their own purge. I *had* to snag some of it.

Mr Moustache is one of my fav pieces. His word is missing but I had to keep his picture, it’s just too cool.

I also love how scientific they’re making measuring these apples look. It’s apparently quite volatile work. Needs to be done in a lab.

I’ll share the word ones tomorrow.

Whoops.

So I finally got to a project I’ve been meaning to get to, revamping my dresser!

I jazzed it up with some of my vintage contact paper.

But I ran into a problem.

I ran out of contact paper. I have enough to do one more drawer.

Sooo I went with this design. I might find something to cover the empty drawers, perhaps a solid green, but for now I’ll just leave them. It doesn’t look too silly . . . right? con

Jam filled weekend.

Spent most of my weekend doing this. I also depleted my stash of Kool Aid Jammer pouches! Which means I either have to buy them for my kids to drink, which is sugar they don’t need, or I need to get begging!

Creative Bug

Ok now that summer is upon me I have to embrace these 2 months of free time and go crazy creating and catching up! I’ve had a Creativebug Inc membership for a while but have only watched a small percentage of my flagged ‘want to watch’ classes.

I watched Anna Maria Horner’s Modern Doily class and then of course wandered off to buy her book. Because, you know, I need more projects.

They have a free content section, that I recommend checking out. You can also subscribe and get access to all the content, which is a great deal.

I’ll be that evil person hoping for some rainy days here and there that stick me inside the house so I can get all this stuff done!

Couch to 5K progress

So I’m into week 7 of the Couch to 5K program.

Here’s a usual sort of pre-run photo.

This is usually me post run.

But I keep it up. Haven’t lost weight from it but shape is changing and I feel better and I can only assume it’ll help me keep up with these 2 busy boys I’ve got.